YUCCA VALLEY TOWN COUNCIL PART 1: DIVISION ON MORE HIGHWAY MEDIANS, GUTTERS AND SIDEWALKS

YUCCA VALLEY TOWN COUNCIL PART 1: DIVISION ON MORE HIGHWAY MEDIANS, GUTTERS AND SIDEWALKS

By Z107.7 News, on November 20th, 2013

Last night, the Yucca Valley Town Council narrowly accepted the sole bid for a construction project on Highway 62 on the west end of Town. The $2.8 million dollar project, which will add raised medians, curbs, gutters, and sidewalks from Mohawk Trail to Palm Avenue, and a traffic light at Church Street, is slated to start in February and will last at least four months. Managing editor Tami Roleff was at last night’s 4-hour marathon meeting. Today in part one of a two-part report, she explains why the vote was so close. Tomorrow, spay and neuter vouchers…
In a 3-2 vote, the Yucca Valley Town Council accepted the sole bid for the second highway median project on the west end of town. Seven business owners told the Council the medians would hurt their business, including Chet Smelser of Chet’s Appliance. “This is going to cost me my business, and I have 12 people working for me. I’m going to move my business to Joshua Tree.” Many spoke out about the dangers of having commercial trucks drive on alternate routes through residential streets to get to the businesses, and about the Town’s poor notification in notifying business owners about the project. Council member Bob Leone agreed with the business owners. “The business people are constituents of this town. The people of this Town own the town, we don’t own the Town. There isn’t a person out there that I’ve spoken to that isn’t against the medians.” Mayor Merl Abel thought the Town should scrap the raised medians and only go forward with the sidewalks and traffic light. “We got a lot of it right; we got part of it wrong. I would love to reject this one and come up with a project and say we’re just not going to do center dividers at this particular time.” Council member Dawn Rowe argued that previous councils made a commitment to the Town that the current council needed to honor. “This is an inevitable project that will come forward sometime in the future; we will be required to do this. I’m not willing to throw away a million dollars that we have put aside and then add more money to do this later.” Voting to accept the bid were Dawn Rowe, George Huntington, and Mayor Pro Tem Robert Lombardo. The revised median project will include a left-hand turn pocket for northbound Palm Avenue only. As part of the approval council members also asked staff to prepare a rough construction cost of paving the alley between Palm and Grand Avenues, and Pima Trail east of Church Street to Palm Avenue.

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